Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/424

 Rem. 1. (a) Coherent substances, &c., are mostly regarded as single, and are, accordingly, almost always represented by nouns in the singular, cf. ,, , , , , , , , , . Plurals are, however, formed from some of these words expressing materials in order to denote separate portions taken from the whole in manufacture (plurals of the result) or parts otherwise detached from it; thus, ; , , 35; (dual) fetters of brass;  (timber for building or sticks for burning); also in a wider sense,  particles of alloy to be separated by smelting, ; , , cf. .

(b) To the class of plurals of the result belong also a few names of natural products, when represented in an artificial condition; thus, in grain (threshed wheat), as distinguished from  (used collectively) in the ear; cf. the same distinction between and ;  and  (the singular preserved only in the Mishna) lentils;  and ; also,  (to be inferred from ) flax.

(c) Finally, the distinction between and  requires to be specially noticed. The singular is always used when the blood is regarded as an organic unity, hence also of menstrual blood, and the blood of sacrifices (collected in the basin and then sprinkled), and in of the blood gushing from wounds. On the other hand, as a sort of plural of the result and at the same time of local extension, denotes blood which is shed, when it appears as blood-stains  or as blood-marks (so evidently in ). But since blood-stains or blood-marks, as a rule, suggest blood shed in murder (although also denotes the blood which flows at child-birth or in circumcision),  acquired (even in very early passages) simply the sense of a bloody deed, and especially of bloodguiltiness,  f., &c.

In some few cases the plural is used to denote an indefinite singular; certainly so in ;   (cf. );   (where evidently only one child is thought of, certainly though in connexion with a contingency which may be repeated); cf. also (if one of them fall).—So probably also, , , , ; but not , since the same document  makes Lot dwell in the cities of the Jordan valley; in   denotes the class with which the action is concerned. In instead of the unusual  (formerly explained here as in one of the cities of Gilead) we should most probably read, with Moore ( Judges, p. 52),  (in) Gilead.

2. When a substantive is followed by a genitive, and the compound idea thus formed is to be expressed in the plural, this is done—

(a) Most naturally by using the plural of the, e.g. (prop. heroes of strength), , 9; so also in compounds, e.g.  , as the plur. of ; but also

(b) By using the plural of both nouns, e.g. ;